Saffron is a valuable and expensive spice which used in drug, textile dye and food industries. The major compound of saffron is Safranal which is responsible for the saffron aroma. Safranal also exhibits high antioxidant and free radical scavenging activity. It has also been shown to have antidepressant properties. Thus the use of a proper method for the extraction and preconcentration of safranal from Saffron is needed. A modified dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) method followed by UVVis analysis as a simple, inexpensive and rapid technique was applied for the determination of safranal in Saffron samples.In this method a narrow-bore tube including aqueous samples was used as extraction container. After extraction, the extraction solvent which is less dense than water was collected on top of the solution, then by a capillary tube a portion of collected phase was injected into a quarts microcell and was analyzed with a UV-Vis spectrophotometer (λmax= 320 nm).The influence of several important parameters involving type and volume of extraction and disperser solvents, aqueous sample volume, salt effect and pH, were studied and optimized. Under the optimized condition the enrichment factor (165), limit of detection (25 μg L-1) and relative standard deviation was obtained 4.6%. Finally, the proposed NT-DLLME-UV method was applied for extraction and determination of safranal in Iranian saffron samples and the results revealed that is a satisfactory technique for the extraction and preconcentration of safranal in saffron samples.
